- There's a lot of firsts that I'm the first female president to serve in 94 years of our college's existence.

And so it's really neat for me to know, and I'll back up to some of the firsts that I've had, is that Title IX was a federal policy that came along back in the seventies, mid seventies, that made high schools and colleges, make sure that there was equity in women's access to sports.

Was fortunate enough that Amarillo College was also adding women's basketball the year after that.

So I got to come to Amarillo College on a scholarship, paid for my education, and so I was thrilled.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Stevi Breshears, and this is "Spotlight On", a series where Panhandle PBS producers shine a light on things going on in the Texas panhandle.

Today I'm in the Gilvin Broadcast Center with Anette Carlisle, chair of the Amarillo College Board of Regents, and Denese Skinner, the interim president of Amarillo College.

And today we are going to talk about some things going on at Amarillo College and the search for a new president.

So can you tell me what the committee is looking for in a new Amarillo College President?

- They're looking for someone who would be a good leader, who will be a good leader, who will step into our culture and really embrace it and move forward for the good of our students and for our community.

Who that person is, we don't know yet.

So we're just in the beginning phases.

- And I think probably to add to what Anette's saying is that we're looking for someone who can be connected with the community at both the local, state and national level, and that they need to be out representing the college in our community to stakeholders that for employers, for our representatives and leaders to our government.

And that we just need to make sure that Amarillo College is being represented and has a voice at all levels.

The other piece that I think that would be important would be for them to really dig in to the financial health of our college for being able to raise money for the college, to be able to manage the resources that we have coming in from the state, to make sure that we are doing well and growing the college and using the money that we have currently effectively.

- Can you tell us a little bit about what's going on at this point in the transition and if there's an end goal, date in mind, how things are going?

- Well, I wish I could tell you that, and if I'd have told you that six months ago, I would've said now, but these things move a lot slower than I even realized.

But we started the process in June with a special meeting to really set out how we were gonna do this process.

And we pretty much stuck to that.

And I've asked our finance committee, the three members on that and another regent to work with four members of the leadership at Amarillo College to vet our search firm options.

And we've gotten our request for proposal out.

We got four folks apply, or four organizations.

They've vetted those, narrowed it to two.

We've already worked with the Aspen College Excellence Program to set those parameters.

What are the key elements and attributes that we want for the future, to lead the future of Amarillo College.

And the entire board participated.

They had also interviewed a number of community members ahead of time and really narrowed it down and did a workshop with us.

Josh Wyner came from Aspen College Excellence Program and worked with us one evening to really flesh that out.

And that's what the search firm will use, along with the search committee that will be appointed to move forward and take applications and do interviews.

- Stevi, what happens after that is the search firm will take, after working with our board and the search team, what they'll do is take the information they've garnered from that and go back and develop their marketing plan for, how do we do a nationwide search?

So they will cast their net nationwide and people will start applying.

They'll go out and recruit people, they'll know of other people that they've worked with at other colleges that they may be the perfect fit for Amarillo College.

And they'll bring them back.

They'll vet them and their top candidates, they will let the college then have a look at those.

And then based on that, we will interview those candidates, bring them on campus, let our campus community and our local community come in and be a part of looking at those candidates to see, do they fit us or not?

So the whole interview process, they will just help us through that to bring the best qualified candidates to Amarillo College to make sure that we have the chance to look at those, interview them and make the selection.

- And our search committee will be led by fellow Regent, Dr. Paul Proffer.

- Oh, awesome, very cool.

How have things changed since Russell left, just kind of in general across campus?

- Well, I know your life has changed a lot.

- Yes.

- We were very fortunate to have Denese Skinner say yes when I went and asked, would you consider being the interim if this happens?

And she said yes before I got out of the office.

So I thought she would have to think on it, but she's a dedicated leader and doing a fabulous job.

We miss Russell, we're sorry he left, but we will move on and continue the excellence that Amarillo College is known for, because we have such a wonderful team.

We've got a great board.

These folks are dedicated, we're well known in the community and have a really good reputation in the community.

And we're doing, you know, day in and day out is the work that gets the students across the finish line.

It's not in the president's office so much as it is in what the folks in the classroom and in the advisory area and all those other support systems, what they do.

And we're only ramping those up.

I mean, I saw the new signage on the enrollment center as I was driving up.

That's great.

- Yes.

- So all that's really just continuing to move forward, Denese.

- We have such a strong strategic plan and the buy-in from our employees that Russell and our board's leadership in his tenure here, it's real clear what we need to do.

It's real clear the how we approach what we do.

Our values are really clear.

And whenever you know what your theory of change is, which is remove a life barrier an accelerated learning environment, in a deep culture of caring, Stevi, we know what we have to do.

And we are continuing to do that.

With Russell here or Russell gone, we are very dedicated to doing the things that we need to do to make sure our students are successful.

And so that's what's really heartwarming, and it's gotta be comforting for our board, is that we know what we need to do regardless of who's at the helm.

And we are going to continue to do it.

- Is there anything else that y'all wanna add about the transition or the search or anything like that?

- I will, the board knows how important this is, and this is one of the few real roles of a board of Regents.

We hire and fire the executive officer.

We set policy, we set tax and budget and really, you know, we can help with the vision and the strategic plan, where we're going.

But really this is our big job and we're not gonna take it lightly.

We're going to do due diligence in vetting any candidate and in getting the person that's the right fit for our community and our college.

- Well, we have a few questions for you, Denese, to get to know you a little better.

So you started at Amarillo College as a student on a basketball scholarship.

Can you tell us a little bit about your journey from Amarillo College student to interim president?

- I sure can, what's interesting, Stevi, is that there's a lot of firsts, that I'm the first female president to serve in 94 years of our college's existence.

And so it's really neat for me to know, and I'll back up to some of the firsts that I've had, is that Title IX was a federal policy that came along back in the seventies, mid seventies, that made high schools and colleges make sure that there was equity in women's access to sports.

So I played on the first girls basketball team that Amarillo ISD field at Amarillo High.

So I played there, was fortunate enough that Amarillo College was also adding women's basketball the year after that.

So I got to come to Amarillo College on a scholarship, paid for my education.

And so I was thrilled, I've got shadow boxes of all the first memorabilia.

- Oh, that's great.

- From Amarillo College that I have hanging in my office.

So it's just really neat to look back on that and know that you were part of the first there.

I went on and played at UNLV in Las Vegas and finished up playing at Texas Tech.

I was one of the first women to play, to transfer from AC to a division one program.

And I was happy about that, to be able to do that.

Got out and coached and taught for seven years.

I was typically, most of the time the only woman on all male staff because I was in small schools.

Loved every minute of the coaching.

Moved outta coaching and got into higher ed at West Texas A&M University.

In that role, many times I was promoted and put on different projects, many times I was the first woman that served in many of those leadership roles.

So it was neat to go through that.

And then I came recruited to Amarillo College.

I came back and what a thrill it was for me to come back to Amarillo College and work.

And for me to come full circle back to where I started was really an honor for me.

And then to serve in the current role that I'm in now as the president.

What a neat deal, wouldn't it be neat if everyone who got their start at a college could circle back and be on the leadership team of the college?

It just an honor for me, and I love it.

- That's wonderful.

It is a very, just a neat experience to come back to the place where you got your start.

I was also an Amarillo College student, and now I get to work on campus.

So it's a great place to be.

I think we can all agree on that.

- I do.

- You touched on this a little bit, but what does it mean to you to be the first female president of Amarillo College?

- Well, first of all, what I think it's important that we recognize that the Board of Regents are the ones that said yes.

For y'all as regents to get out of the mold of what typically happens for upper leadership in a college, that it's typically a man and for them in 94 years, for this board to be the one that says, we're going to choose a woman.

And the fortunate thing for me is, I think qualified woman that whenever they looked around at who was in their pool of candidates, I'm thrilled that they tag me, chose me to be a part of that.

So it's an opportunity for our college and our community to be a barrier breakers, to be part of equity and inclusion and opportunity to be able to have me, it's a role model for other people, other women who are wanting to strive to be the leader of their company, their corporation or their community college or university to say it's possible and to just, to be able to say that it's long overdue, that women are recognized for their ability and their opportunity and their place at the table.

And not just necessarily at the table, but at the front of the table, at the head of the table.

It's long overdue.

Anette, did y'all have any conversations about that?

- A few, but what I will say is I think a woman approaches things differently.

And I know that probably sounds sexist, but women hear things in a room differently or feel the body language differently.

And this is not always true.

There's certainly folks who don't, women who don't, or men who do.

And they also look at things differently.

Any individual's gonna look at things differently than their predecessor and maybe see some things that need cleaning up.

So I think Denese is well on her way to reevaluating some of the things that we're kind of in limbo.

Not that she's taking on brand new stuff as an interim, but she's looking at things that we're already involved in already spending money on and saying, is this the best use of our resources?

And are the right people leading these things?

And she's really doing an excellent job of saying, okay, we need to pull different or different people together, do different partnerships in the community, whatever, to really move us forward in areas we're already involved.

- But part of this Stevi is, I know your question was directed at me, but the other piece that we need to be aware of is Region Carlisle.

- [Stevi] Absolutely.

- That many of the things that she's done in her career and with our board, it's women approach it differently.

She is the chair of our board, and I think that.

- I'm not the first female chair of the board.

(person laughing) - But there hasn't been a ton of them.

- No.

- In that the opportunity for women to lead, and it says, you look at it, it's a different culture.

You see things differently, you interact differently, you communicate differently.

So it's an honor and a pleasure to be serving.

And I know Anette feels the same way.

- Yeah.

- And you're so right that any one person will have different life experiences and approach things differently and see different things that need to be done.

And that's especially important at a place like Amarillo College where we have students of such diverse backgrounds.

And we need people in leadership positions who see things differently and understand those different needs and approaches.

So I think that's very important.

- Well, one thing you asked about earlier is what are we looking for?

We're looking for someone who has the same kind of passion about doing this work that most of us here do.

- Denese, what are some of your goals personally, for your time as interim president of the college?

- Stevi, we have to continue our work on student completion and whatever that picture looks like, and that we need open, we need to have access, we've gotta have more of our students in the community that need the higher education.

Whether that's a certificate, an associate's degree, or whether they plan on transferring, we need to make sure that the college is still doing an excellent job there.

So that's key.

First of all, is that our primary mission is educating our students.

We need to continue our focus there.

The other piece that I would like to continue on, two more, I have three.

So the second thing that I think we need to continue to focus on is our funding.

And that House Bill eight gave us an opportunity to be funded not for our contact hours, but for our completion, for success things that we do.

So, for example, dual credit students who get 14 hours of credit, we get more funding.

Our students who transfer after 14 hours of credit, we get more funding.

So for the certificates that we do, for whether it's a level one or level two certificate, we get funding for the success that we have with our students rather than how many credit hours they take.

So we need to figure out what the formula is, how do we capitalize and be able to do a better job of getting students to those marks.

And if we'll do that, we'll continue to have the success.

But the funding model changed this year, and that's gonna be a really strategic thing that we have to make sure that we're on top of.

- Perfect, Anette kind of touched on this earlier, but what's the adjustment been like for you from Vice President of Student Affairs to interim president?

- There's a whole lot more gears turning at the president's level than there is in student affairs.

So that has been a real eye-opener for me.

You think you know what's happening at your college as an employee and in student affairs as the VP, you know what's happening.

Well, when you go to the next level, it gets more complicated.

It gets more detailed.

But what I've found and what I know now is that my ally is the board of Regens, especially Anette.

Anette has been a wonderful mentor for me, a good sounding board.

So I've found that, that my relationships with the board, and especially with Anette and the other cabinet members, have been invaluable in that you can't know everything.

And I think even if Russell in his role that he was there forever, there were many times that he and Anette communicated to be able to talk about what was necessary and needed.

And so, certainly for me being a novice, I need to rely on those folks that have been at the college and know what's going on to guide me.

So, more complicated, a whole lot more gears rolling.

- And I'll just point out, as current board chair, that's part of our job is to interact with each other at a higher level than if I weren't board chair.

So whoever board chair is, is certainly involved at a much higher level.

- Well, I wanna open this question back up to both of you, but in general, what do you think makes a good leader?

- I will jump in, to me, leadership is taking responsibility and taking responsibility to make a difference.

And it's not always easy.

In fact, many times leadership is difficult.

It's complicated, it's challenging, but it's keeping that vision in the forefront that you're bringing you and your team along together towards, it's sticking to the mission and not getting sidetracked by all the shiny things that are out there in our world.

It's building relationships, it's good communication.

And I'll just say as I pass it off to my right, she's doing a great job of all those things, so.

- But what is important on this leadership piece is that I wanna come back to Anette.

And that you really have to have courage to see a problem and go after it.

Anette, when I first met Anette, she was working on a project called Panhandle 2020.

Anette, share a little bit about what the goal was there.

- Well, that started 20 years ago.

And our focus was to build a better community and look at our numbers, look at the data and say, is this community we want to live in five, 10, 20 years from now?

And we called it Panhandle 2020 'cause back then 2020 was so far away.

But you know, Russell was involved, Denese was involved from WT at the time and a lot of other players in our community.

And we pulled together and studied things and really focused over time on two main things.

Educational attainment and trying to improve access to education for our entire region and as well as strengthen those pathways between institutions or within the K12 world when I was on school board between elementary, middle and high school, then to college.

And so we've been partners for a long time at a much stronger level than we were before.

But we've noticed that the biggest challenge to educational attainment was the challenge of poverty in our community, which is a high poverty community.

And while our educational attainment rates have improved, our poverty continues to grow and challenge too many individuals.

And so we're trying to do everything in our region through Panhandle 2020, we and built a lot of partnerships and a lot of things.

But Amarillo College really embraced the work and really put things in place to help meet the needs of our low income students and even our staff.

So we really try to be aware and to meet the needs of our community.

And it's evolved into the Panhandle Community Partnerships, that's a regional partnership that's housed under the Amarillo Area Foundation, the work at Amarillo College and a number of things across the community.

- But Anette had to be the one with the idea.

She saw the need and she said, I'm not gonna sit here and not do anything.

So she started collecting these people, influencers around the Texas panhandle and said, here's what we've gotta go do and make this happen.

So if you're talking about leadership, it's somebody who can inspire you, see a problem, you can inspire other people to get involved in the solution and continue with you.

So Anette was really a big push behind what we're currently doing here at Amarillo College because of the work she did starting in 2020 in the willingness to.

- No, in 2003.

- 2003?

- Yeah, 20 years ago.

- Oh, that's true, 2003.

To be able to push that agenda and stick with it and stay with it, that's some tenacity.

And so your leadership, if you just wanna have a model and say, okay, what does it look like?

It's Anette.

All right, so for me, what I think that that leadership looks like is, Anette mentioned it, it's about how you build relationships with the people with whom you work.

And I think it comes in trust, stability, compassion and hope.

And that if I can provide those four things for the people that I lead, things go better for everybody.

So the trust piece is do I do what I say and say what I do?

Am I dependable, can you count on me?

That's the trust piece.

Stability, we all need to work in a place that's safe and where we can make a living.

And so there's some stability there that you can count on making a living compassion.

We need to not just be so hardcore that we don't understand that people are people.

There are things that happen to us as we go about our day-to-day lives.

And if we can have a leader who understands, that loves me, that has some compassion, that is generous, but at the same time holds my feet to the fire and we're gonna accomplish things, creates a whole different type of relationship.

And then the last thing is hope.

We need to make sure that people see that the future will be better than today.

And we have the power to get there.

I think a good leader creates that hope by putting together a plan that is doable, that people can get behind and go do at Amarillo College, what that looks like.

Remove a life barrier in an accelerated learning environment, in a deep culture of caring.

So if you put that together, that gives you hope about how are we gonna change Amarillo College and the students in our community?

You can do it through trust, ability, compassion and hope and a good theory of change.

- Okay, that's four, not three.

- Okay.

(people laughing) Thank you for counting Anette.

- We're taking points off for that.

- All right, I say I can't do math in public, so maybe I can't.

- That was great, that was great.

Do either of you have anything else that you wanna add?

- We look forward to bringing in the right person for Amarillo College and for Amarillo and the region and the state.

We are not only leaders in our community at Amarillo College.

We have become leaders throughout the state and leaders throughout the nation.

People are copying us all across maybe the world, but I just know national stuff more in state things.

And we're gonna continue to do that.

So we've gotta have the right fit, we've gotta have the right person to embrace our vision and add to it and work with us to move forward.

- And what an honor Stevi it is to be in Amarillo, Texas at Amarillo College at this very time and space to be able to serve and make an impact.

And for me, I sit and think, okay, what is it that the contribution I'm gonna make?

And what I've found is that if you just give it your all, wherever it is you're doing, things work out.

And so for me, throughout my career, that's what it's been.

And to be able to be here at Amarillo College and serve our community in this capacity, what an honor it is for me.

And I hope that I can make the impact, that people are going, you know what, she wasn't there very long, but she made an impact.

That's what I'm after.

(upbeat music) - Beautiful, well, thank you both for being here today and thank you for joining us on "Spotlight On".

Tune in next time to learn more about what's going on in our community.

(upbeat music)